Dair felt the cold in the caves and took a deep breath of it into his lungs. He turned several corners until he came upon a three paths branching off. The one to the left of him was bathed in the pale, icy light that had suffused the corridor behind him. The center one held a softer, gray light that neither seemed to pull him forcefully, nor welcome him. The third path, the one to the right, was bathed in a sickly, brackish green light. The only sound her heard was from the third path, and it was the sound of a child weeping.
With no hesitation upon hearing the crying, he turned down the right hand path and strode confidently through the sickly haze of light until he found himself in a room. The room was one he recognized, it was the slaves quarters on the ship he had been found in. The sickly green light suffusing the air came from ruptured coolant pipes in the ceiling. The room was in shambles, as if a great battle had been fought, then forgotten in the room. The room was circular, with cupboards along most of the walls, doors hanging open or smashed entirely. In the center of the room were seven bunks, bolted to the floor haphazardly. He remembered those bunks, the seven of them had taken turns with the bunk in the center, the one spot that was safest. Whenever the masters had needed a slave for any reason, they just came in and pulled the nearest one handy. Dair remembered forgoing many of his turns to let some of the smaller slaves have an extra turn. It meant more work for him, more beatings for him, more...
He turned aside from that thought as he scanned the room again. Off to the left he saw a body, with a weeping child covered in blood rocking next to it. Dair stepped over to the scene and took it in. The captain of the ship was laying dead, splinters of wood and pieces of other things were protruding from his flesh at random intervals at odd angles. The confusing mass of purple and black bruises did not hide the identity of the Zabrak man, his staring eyes filled with blood. Whatever had beaten him, had done so with tremendous strength. That was when the child turned and looked up at him. Shocked, Dair took a step back and stared at...himself. Rather, it was himself when he was younger. They stared at each other until a sound drew their attention to a door that was opening. The younger Dair's face grew into a sickly grin as a group of slaves and two overseers entered the room. Young Dair leapt upon the closest slave, tearing out his throat with his bare hand, the other one pushing out and slamming three more slaves against the wall hard enough to dent the bulkhead. All four victims fell, dead, as Dair watched his younger self fly through the rest of the slaves and then the Overseers. His younger self took his time with the Overseers, playing with them and torturing them using the Force. When all was done, his younger self walked up to him, blood coating his face, chest and arms.
"You find horror in your heart at what I have done." His younger self told him as he sat on one of the bunks, blood pooling beneath him as it slid off slowly. "Horror, yet you now that deep inside you wished for this to happen. In those years after you were found, you wanted to be able to go back and use your power. Take power, and their lives, for your own. Release the Jedi ideal you pull so close to your heart. Let your anger suffuse you, empower you. All you want, all you desire, is yours for the taking. You are powerful in the force, more so than you realize. Find someone to train you in the dark arts, then kill them and find another. Dispose of those not useful to your rise to power!" Young Dair's voice was sickly, edged in a constant state of anger and hate.
Dair knelt and looked the little boy in the eye. "Yes, I have felt you before." His powerful voice filled the room, though he spoke softly. "You are my hate. I have dealt with you before. You are what the Masters and Instructors felt in me before, why they were so worried that I would fall."
"Do not fall, leap. The darkness will embrace you." The hate filled boy said. Dair shook his head.
"No. I will not do as you say, for that path is not the path I desire. I do not want power." Slowly, Dair reached out to his younger self and pulled him close. The younger Dair, head moving in jerking motions, watched the arms come close, but didn't resist as the older Dair pulled him into an embrace. Dair closed his eyes and felt a lone tear fall down his face. "You do not need to hate and fear anymore. We have found a home."
When Dair opened his eyes again, he saw that he was kneeling in the corridor where the three branches had split away from where he had come. He looked to the right and saw that that path had been blocked with a rockfall. He hadn't felt any rocks fall. He took a deep breath, suffused with the cold of ice again, and the scent and feel of the Force flowing strongly through the caves.
The next sound came to Dair from the middle path, the one that stood directly before him. He stepped onto the path and soon found himself winding upward at a mildly steep angle. He climbed for a few minutes until he came out into a cavern with many crystals protruding from the ceiling and walls. In the center of the cavern sat a man garbed all in grey. As Dair stepped through the entrance, the man stood and turned. It was Dair, looking exactly as he did now, except he was garbed in grey and had an expression of tempered anger on his face.
"You." The other Dair stated simply, then strode forward, making a circuit around Dair. He stopped in front of the Jedi padawan and looked him up and down, like a drill instructor. "You are weak. You pander to the words of Jedi and swear to defend against evil. Neither is the path you must trod. There is emotion, never serenity. The universe is ignorant, and you know nothing. Do not defend those who can not defend themselves, for in that you are doing the universe a disservice. Make them stand for themselves, only stand with those who can protect themselves. Only then can you find your path, only then can you fight and win. Winning is the only reason to fight, and the only acceptable outcome."
Dair opened his mouth to speak, but the other Dair merely slapped him. "Don't, You'll only spout some words that will make me angry. Go. You are not ready to walk my path."
There was no transition, just a blink and he was standing in the branch junction again. He was stunned speechless. That other him was a warrior, throughout his entire being. Dair knew he wanted to be a warrior, but that other him was far to jaded, far to focused on fighting for him. Dair shook his head, he felt a mild sense of pity for that other self, wondering what could happen to make him feel so jaded. The path directly ahead stood open still, but Dair didn't walk it. He turned to the left most path. No sound came from the path, but he had walked the others, so he had to find out what was on the third path. Dair stepped into the pale icy light.
Instantly, Dair found the way behind him closed, the way ahead was a wall straight up, crystals jutted from every surface, offering a way to climb. Dair set his hands to the crystals, then drew them back. The crystals were burning hot, yet the air was cold. Dair fished his gloves from his pocket and pulled them on. He could still feel the intense heat radiating through the gloves, but he persevered. He climbed up, at times the way was so close that he got cut on the superheated crystals, other times he came to a ledge that required he jump across the spanning chasm beneath to grasp the crystals mid fall and continue climbing. This path took a seeming lifetime of toil to climb, but he did not stop. Finally, he pulled himself up over the top of the crystal chimney and lay panting. The air around him was cold, and sunlight fell across him. He lay outside, on a ledge on the side of the mountain glacier. Below he could see the blizzard blowing through passes in the ice and rock, but up here the air was calm and cold. Dair pulled himself up to a seated position and looked out over the day.
Eventually, Dair became aware of a presence beside him. It was a large, grizzled man with pale hair and a full, trimmed beard. There were faded scars on his exposed skin, but his face was as calm as the air up here. His eyes were closed, but Dair knew that they would be a pale blue. They would be his eyes, but older. Dair turned and faced the world again, taking deep breaths and letting the Force flow through him.
"You have faced our younger selves. How do you feel?" His older self asked him. His voice was a deep basso, rolling out from his mouth with the inexorable power of a glacier cutting a path through rock.
"Neither of those paths were the ones I would walk. I have felt the anger and hatred of our younger self. I have received help and gotten through the worst of it. I won't be so naive as to think that I will never feel it again, nor that I will not be tempted to walk a darker path, but this is the path I choose. I will be a warrior, tempered in compassion, not in anger or hate. I will keep my mind open, not close it with a jadedness brought on by horrible experiences. I will strive to always remember that, no matter how dark times get...places like this exist."
He closed his eyes and drank in the cold light. When he opened them again, he saw a crystal sitting before him. It was a pale blue crystal, like light diffused through ice unthinkably thick. He smiled softly and took the crystal in his gloved hand. He held it close to him and walked back up the path back to [member="Corvus Raaf"]. The whole walk back he was going over what he had seen. He had a lot of questions, and a lot to go over. Master Raaf might have some answers, but he suspected that the answers were all within him.
